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Gary wrote in, asking if the new Craftsman Versastack tool boxes are compatible with Dewalt Tstak tool boxes.

We asked about this at the Craftsman media event, and it took a couple of tries, but it was strongly suggested that YES, the Craftsman Versastack tool boxes are compatible with Dewalt’s Tstak tool boxes.

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This is important because there are some Dewalt Tstak accessories (such as the dolly) that don’t seem to be available in Craftsman Versatrak branding yet, and there might be Craftsman Versastack tool boxes or accessories that won’t come to the Dewalt Tstak line.

Aside for the cordless radio charger, the other Versastack tool box items are said to be made in the USA with global materials.

You can find more of my thoughts on the Dewalt Tstak system in this best modular tool box system roundup. I really need to update that post to discuss newer product systems, but my impressions still stand. The Tstak, or Craftsman Versastack system in this case, offers good value. While not as large or strong as Dewalt ToughSystem or Milwaukee Packout tool boxes, they’re lightweight and can hold a fair amount of tools.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Stanley Black & Decker will continue to sell Dewalt Tstak tool boxes alongside the new Craftsman Versastack ones.

Please let us know if you discover any potential compatibility issues!

I haven’t seen Versastack tool boxes at the local stores yet. In the meantime, Dewalt Tstak tool boxes are readily available online.

52 Comments

Lowe’s currently has the Stanley version marked down to $95 from $119 and marked clearance. Looks like the Craftsman is at worse, $15 cheaper. That’s a win for consumers. If SBD keeps doing stuff like this I think they’ll be able to turn the brand around.

I’m guessing that Dewalt/SBD set up a new plastic tool box production center here, and that’s how they’re able to achieve lower pricing. Tool boxes are large and bulky, and can’t be inexpensive to ship internationally. That’s probably where most of the savings come from.

Shipping (on ships) costs are incredibly low. It was reported a year ago that the cost of transporting a felevison from Japan to the UK was less than the (absolute) cost of transporting it from Harwich to London. I thought that SBD as a matter of policy were maximising the amount of their products made in the USA.

I’m with Red on this one. My Aunt used to work in the Textiles industry, and she explained how complicated the shipping container to shipping container shipping system worked. She always said it was reduced in complexity and financial cost by about 90% since the 1950’s. The size of the ships means they really only care about maximum weight capacity, and fuel costs. Everything else is profit, or tiny overhead.

Back in the 1950’s, through to about the 1980’s, the shipping companies had to invest in, own, and maintain the containers as well as the ships and docks. Then it all separated out. Larger companies that did masses of importing and exporting, skipped the shipping companies for the containers, and started having them made specifically for their merchandise. They’d simply use, and re-use these containers at both ends of the journey, reducing the cost of shipping drastically. A trend that has gone to an extreme in the 21st century, with shipping containers having almost as many versions as customizing your own car or house.

Now, a company like SBD can own, say, 10 thousand or more shipping containers worldwide. All they need to pay for is what is essentially down to shipping weight of their containers on a ship. And with shipping companies hauling massive items as big as crane parts, or airplane engines, the taxes and tariffs they have to charge those customers, plus brokerage fees, means they can charge those customers more per ton/pound or tonne/kilogram than they charge lighter items. They can easily take on a customer whose shipping containers only fill one row of the vessel, but the fees they charge for that row’s worth of containers could easily be enough to cover their fuel costs for the journey. That leaves them the rest of the boat to offer at a lower rate for contracts with companies that have lighter containers, like tools, small components, and yes, textiles like my Aunt dealt in.

So, really, if we’re talking a small business renting a container to sell their wares overseas, yeah… they’ll be paying the normal rates you’d get from UPS, or DHL, or whoever else, and the shipping is going to HURT. But, if we’re talking a company big enough to own their OWN containers, and who are big enough to have CONTRACTS with shipping companies, their shipping containers will be sent via container ship at pennies on the dollar, figuratively, compared to what we’d expect such huge loads to cost. These Craftsman branded TSTAK boxes probably only cost SBD the amount it took to rebrand them, and pack them into the same containers as the DeWALT ones. Considering the price they’d get for the DeWALT ones, much like the shipping company that shipped the container, they could offer the Craftsman models at a lower price because they didn’t cost any more than the DeWALT ones did. If these are popular enough, these become the low cost way to cover the production costs of the line, and the DeWALT ones become pure profit.

My Aunt worked for a company that invested in just 4 containers, and owned 3 big rig trucks with container trailers (In Canada at least), and their savings in shipping across the Pacific, and across land from port to warehouse, was saving them 60% in shipping costs per year. They were shipping things from the Asian and Indian Sub-Continent 52 weeks a year, and paying close to $10 per Container due to their capacity to transport across land themselves, and their contract with the same company that was shipping heavy steel overseas. There were taxes and tariffs way above that, in the thousands per container, but those all went to brokers and the government. Same is probably true here for SBD, only they’re probably getting a much better deal for owning and operating more of the delivery system themselves.

The last couple of years the Dewalt 3pc tough system has been on sale for around $100 for black Friday. I would not be surprised to see the craftsman for this price in November. Overall I would hold off on buying any of these types of things until we see this years black Friday adds.

I was checking out the 2-drawer box but the way they have them sealed, you can’t open the drawers to see if they’ll fit whatever you’re interested in using them for.

I’ve also noticed that even though the stores have a whole end cap display with plenty of the boxes, only certain models show as available to buy online. Lowe’s is probably going to miss out on a lot of sales it would otherwise get if online inventory doesn’t reflect what’s actually available and people look elsewhere to buy other products.

I am all for more of these in stores all the time. I am glad they are compatible across brands.

Almost by accident, I ended up surrounded by tough system stuff at the house. I got a portable power station, and then saw a DS450 on clearance and HD and figured I would get it to put the power station on.

That led to a tote, radio, and cooler, another DS450, home rack and large box combos for $85, and then MANY of the clear organizers and XL boxes from HD.com (on clearance for $18 and $25).

If I can get a stack of the smaller system for a cheap price I will probably start buying into it too.

More variety is good. Just yesterday the wife needed to get some paint supplies out of a trailer for my sons scout troop. It was easy to tell her to find the first dewalt stack on the left and give them the whole tough system stack. No digging around, just grab and go.

Why would they not be compatible? One company. 3 brands. All 3 making the same identical product other than color. Only the brand name makes it less or more valuable. Greater or lesser value is not based on beneficial tangible feature distinction. Scam. Don’t be an idiot.

U know. I am a funny duck. As a Dewalt product. I see this as Dewalt plastering their name on everything. As a Craftsman product. This belongs.

I would never buy the Dewalt. However for whatever reason. I see a Craftsman toolbox as being Ok to own.

This is why i think Craftsman is and was always number one. It crosses all genres all affiliations. I own one Dewalt tool. I love it. Craftsman. It is special to so many people. Forget Dewalt. Long live Craftsman

unless you’re under 50. Then craftsman is junk sold at sears made by someone else to cost.

Dewalt is a upper tier proline power tool. Now, i’ll stop there because I think where SBD messed up was putting dewalt name on hand tools and stuff not related to power tools. There shouldn’t be a Dewalt socket set – sorry but no. Maybe impact sockets that go with their impact wrenches etc – find co-branding there. But not a 200 piece hand tool set that should say Stanley or maybe Irwin at best.

Aside from – only because I know SBD owns the craftsman labeled stuff at Lowes – is the only way I’d consider buying it. Just like I’d never purchase a Kenmore somthing. NOT EVER

I’m a DeWALT user, and I’m more with Nathan. Craftsman stopped being the BELOVED Craftsman back somewhere between 1980 and 1990. I’m not exactly sure when it happened, because I was only born in 1982, so if it happened earlier, or before I started as a full tool user at age 9, I genuinely wouldn’t know. Every product they’ve made after that period has been a disgrace to the Craftsman name. I know, because as long as I’ve been a tool user, they’ve been a disgraceful, low-level house brand. But, at the same time, I know from childhood commercials, starring Bob Villa no less, that the Craftsman name USED to mean quality manufacturing at some point.

Though, I will place the “Blame” for DeWALT having Stanley-type hand tools on SBD, not DeWALT. Since DeWALT is owned by SBD, there’s an SBD executive forcing these tools on them no matter what. I will admit to owning a couple DeWALT branded single tools, and they were neither priced different, nor of a different quality than, the Stanley versions. I have the 5-in-1 Hacksaw, and the Folding/Retracting Utility Knife (The first one) but that’s about it. I actually prefer Stanley for most of the hand tool products out there, I simply haven’t purchased a large chunk of what I want yet.

And @Nathan, DeWALT does make some deep impact sockets. I know there’s both an Imperial and a Metric set. But, they’re very small sets, only around 8 or 9 sockets each. I think you and I would agree that we wish their Impact Socket sets were much, much larger.

I’ll also add, Yeti, that DeWALT isn’t the one plastering DeWALT everywhere. It’s SBD. SBD owns all the companies below it, and has been making their marketing decisions for them.

You want someone to blame or hit? SBD. DeWALT is just the brand SBD wants to put forth as its pro line brand. And that includes BOTH Stanley tools AND Black & Decker tools getting this treatment. The two brands that make up the actual name of the company are considered secondary to SBD’s main push brand, DeWALT. So, you have any doubt they’d do this to Craftsman now that they own it?

SBD owns somewhere around 8 major tool brands, depending on several variables, and they’ve been slowly making all of them Micro-DeWALT in one way or another. Some of the brands, like Bostitch, got DeWALT tools made in a much bigger variety long before they were DeWALT tools. The Staple Guns came out in the same models as Bostitch, and in a huge variety of models as per the Bostitch demographic expected of them, and only now we’re getting those designs back in DeWALT form.

It’s always going to be this way. Craftsman, like Sears, is a dead entity. SBD-Craftsman is just going to be the low end DeWALT/Porter Cable/Bostitch/MAC/Stanley copies. Craftsman’s pre-1980 factories were not part of the purchase SBD made with Sears. It’s just a name and a label now. So you might want to live in 2018, so you don’t get cheated buying tools you believe are the same as 40 years ago. Craftsman IS DeWALT, as per SBD’s orders. You’ll just have to accept that in life. We all do.

For the drawers — it would make a lot of sense to standardize tool packaging so that small tools / sets would fit into a draw in a modular way — larger more complex things should be sold so that the packaging would act as a drawer and replace it (and they should sell units sans drawers, or work up some other way to use / re-use them)

…Uh… Amen? Yehaw? I don’t know what word to use here. But this is pretty much a bullseye for me. If TSTAK was more universal, it would make more sense at its price point. By extension, the Stanley and Craftsman lines would benefit from the modularity, since they’re copies. If SBD is going to keep messing with all its child brands’ product lines, they might as well make them all easier to cross-contaminate as well. A DeWALT base or majority, but with a Craftsman here, and a Stanley there, this may even help in identifying what’s inside at a glance! It’s kinda like colour-coding without labels! Yet another thing they should make for the TSTAK system! A LABEL!

Did not know that, Travis… My bad. Thank You! Plastic labels, or mini whiteboards might be nicer, make them reusable. But I was not aware they came with the paper labels! I have too small a place for my tools to invest in the system yet.

Keter (based in Israel, but plants in other countries too) does make a lot of this stuff. I’ve been to one of their plants and their quality control is pretty good. I bought an early rolling Versastack (I needed red/black rather than yellow) for $79 on sale at Lowes. Maybe they were early samples last spring?

I have the Husky Connect 22in. rolling system (which seems to be made/designed by Keter — I wish there was some certainty to the naming so that I could know what’s compatible) — it’s decent, esp. for the price (and I like the monochrome lack of colour scheme) — still trying to sort it out (did get an open organizer to add to it) and have been debating getting the cantilever parts organizer to use as a tool box.

I second that notion that the title should be changed. I don’t think “first look” is the correct terminology for this product(s). I think tstack replica would suit it more justly. I guess that because it’s red and has a craftsman logo embossed on it and sbd called versastack instead of tstack, the author dubbed it as “first look”. I guess he didn’t feel it was necessary to mention the detailed fact that Dewalt & Stanley tstack are the exact same thing as the craftsman versastack with no mention of
a reason why sbd produced something that confuses customers by manufacturing 3 identical products that are colored differently, but sold at different prices. I’m not sure if who owns who awareness bears higher importance (or any importance for this matter) than failing to mention that if you pay more for one brand than the other, you may want to reconsider. Good looking out on the authors behalf. Pot and kettle, right? There is no variation whatsoever in size, design, hardware quality or plastic quality, or product materials between the three modular stackable box systems. Thanks for pointing that out Mr Uzvards.

They are different! I love this system and own some of all 3 brands, Dewalt, Stanley Black and Decker (briefly sold at Lowe’s) and now Craftsman.
The Craftsman are different but compatible with TSTAK. The locking tabs are different but it doesn’t matter. The Craftsman have a new design for the boxes and lids that boasts a WATER SEAL.

I agree. But, I’m hoping that comes to some sort of end in the next tool generation. The SBD-Craftsman line seems hashed together from the best and the most desirable of the other SBD brands, and put together with the same molds to complete a base system for the new line. Once they figure out where the new SBD-Craftsman line does best, they’ll hire a few new engineers and executives to oversee Craftsman, and we’ll get some Craftsman-Specific tools for them, from the engineers of the other successful SBD brands backing them up for large-scale operations. Stanley factories pumping out Craftsman tools that are unique to Craftsman, DeWALT factories doing the same for Craftsman-specific Power Tools… That kind of thing.

I’m hoping all of the SBD brands will end up with tools that their siblings just don’t make, so they can all be totally identifiable as unique.

THAT said… I don’t think it’s a bad thing if all the SBD brands used the TSTAK system, coloured for their brand. It’s a good system, and drawing a line between Home/Consumer brands, and Industrial/Trades brands, I THINK that should be the line that they use for exclusive use of either the TSTAK or ToughSystem boxes. DeWALT, Porter Cable, and Bostitch, for example, are really best called Industrial/Trades brands. Having ToughSystem boxes for them would be great. And TSTAK boxes would work well for them already. Just, the other brands, Stanley, Black & Decker, now Craftsman… They should have the TSTAK boxes, but I think it might be overkill for the ToughSystem boxes.

The System Boxes that each brand has really SHOULD be identical, if you ask me. If you can produce enough for every tool set, and tool owner that buys into the SBD family of tools, and do it cheaply enough for them to be carrying their tools around in their brand’s colours? I say it’s one less thing to cost everyone, and they should go for it. It’s the TOOLS they should focus on making distinct for each brand. Tool BOXES? I don’t care if they’re the same across the board. If they’re a good system, they’re a good system with any brand’s logo on them.

I’d bet that if you asked a focus group, you’d find that most people willing to buy SBD power or hand tools wouldn’t want to spend more for a Tstak case vs. a blow-molded case or whatever other standard tool cases are bundled with kits and sets.

As for having more brands of Tstak cases, I’d be doubtful of that too. Where would they all be sold?

Two lines – Versastack and Tstak, could work well. How many of the customers that find the Craftsman Versastack at Lowes, or are interested by any promos or advertisements, will already be familiar with Dewalt Tstak?

If I worked at SBD, I’d argue the case for two brands – Dewalt and Craftsman – over just one, or for all of them.

I can also see why they called the new system Versastack, instead of just keeping the products known as Tstak. It makes sense, and seems to be the path of least confusion.

You do make a good point about the compatible boxes. For example, you could have Craftsman wrenches and sockets in one, Stanley Hammers in another, and DeWalt power tools in the bigger box. In fact, that would be a pretty neat way to organize them.

But I do think DeWalt needs to stick to power tools and let Craftsman take over the hand tools. There’s still a lot of overlap with other brands, like Porter-Cable and Bostitch. I do agree they are sort of throwing everything out there to see what sticks. I’m not sure if that’s the best strategy in the long run, but they are definitely trying to get the money back on the Craftsman brand.

I do wonder if this means other brand names will be sacrificed in the process.

In a lot of ways, I don’t actually care. Most importantly, I agree that DeWALT should withdraw the hand tools, and leave it to Stanley-Craftsman.

Which, I might add, is how I think, personally, they should handle Craftsman from now on. As an extension of Stanley tools. Instead of being worried about Power Tools in the Stanley system, have the Craftsman brand release Stanley-Craftsman branded tools, hand and powered. Just, we don’t need the full line that DeWALT has in that lineup. Perhaps a few of the Black & Decker Matrix tools, or some other combo of the lower end brands in the family, get seriously beefed up to home improvement levels, and sold as Stanley-Craftsman versions, with distinctly more powerful, and stronger materials. Where B&D might use Plastic gears, perhaps the Craftsman edition uses all metal gearing? I dunno.

I do know that SBD has a marketing division that appears to be on drugs half the time they’re making decisions about what to do with any given SBD brand.

But, ultimately, I don’t care. I don’t care how they do it, I just want them to move FORWARD instead of BACKWARD. I’m just sick of the endless loop discussions about what Craftsman WAS, or what Craftsman SHOULD be, and I know I’m a total hypocrite for that last one.

SBD is going in directions that many of us don’t particularly like, but we follow anyways. Craftsman shouldn’t get shafted in the process, and Porter Cable and Bostitch shouldn’t have to suffer for SBD making too many deals they can’t manage at the same time. Stanley makes some great, completely trivial, designs for tools and storage. If they work for one brand, these trivial things really SHOULD work for all the SBD family. And at this point, I don’t care HOW they do it, as long as nobody has to suffer with it anymore. They ARE taking all their tools, and throwing them at a wall to see what sticks. And that STINKS for those who are bought into those brands.

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